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Who Was Fred Schultz? Remembering Great Players from the Past

AO History Buffs,

The name Fred Schultz came up in another thread. A guy bought a HPA tank that was a Fred Shultz signature series regulator. No one knows who Fred is any more and since he was a great friend of mine I think that is sad.

Fred Schultz was a HUGE personality in paintball. He was MC for the Amateur Open many years in a row. His on stage presence was legendary, either you loved him or hated him but EVERYONE knew who he was. He was captain of Constant Pursuit a winning pro team in its day. He was on the cover of APG more times than anyone else. He was paid by Brass Eagle to do their paintball video. Women he didnít know propositioned him at tourneys.

He had enough pull to get a paintball game into Disney World. I don't mean out behind the fence, I mean in MAIN STREET USA where they filmed us shooting each other. The ends of the streets were netted off and the Disney public watched it go down. If you go there today you might still see where we blew the corners off the foam buildings. This whole thing was setup for a paintball video, one of the first professionally done. Freds motto was "play fair and play clean" not something you would ever hear from a pro player today.

Fields begged Fred to come and general at their big games. He had LOTS of sponsors including us, Vents, Zap, Brass Eagle and Adidas Fred had two dreams, be an actor in Hollywood and make money in paintball. Sadly neither came true and in the late 90ís he faded from view. No one has heard from him in years and sadly now his name is forgotten by all except the few of us still around.

Fred wanted nothing more than to be able to make a living in the sport he loved so much. For those of you thinking about spending the rest of your lives in the paintball industry take heed.

And now a few pictures in fond memory of a good friend.

AGD

In the picture below Fred is with a kid that had was dying from an incurable disease. He loved paintball so Fred got all his sponsors to supply him with equipment.

DUDE! I recognize him. I remember him from when I first started reading APG so many years ago. I knew I recognized the name somehow. That's sad that someone can just be almost erased from a crown. I guess it's the nature of the beast. So no one knows where he is now?

I Remember Fred

Don't worry Tom I remember Fred very well too. All those years at the AM Open AND at Main Street. I had a Fred Schultz system too! I wish we DID know where Fred is now. Ha...remember him from that Brass Eagle video?

And Tom, if I'm not mistaken, isn't the guy gesturing to you and Billy Gardner my very good friend and one-time boss Rene Boucher of Paintball News?

From the first picture it looks like he is at Mare Island paintball which used to be one of the big fields here in the bay area. Is it possible that he used to live in the bay area or was that just a picture from an event?

cool pic! i never met fred personally, but i have heard many stories. i have seen the beagle video and others he was in, he was a bit of a ham, but like tom said, you gotta love him or you just dont like him. also, several other people in the picture. far left, dan colby-Air America, the red hat,bushy mustached guy on the right kinda in the back, tim schloss-pursuit products, he made the original tiger stripe and he made the tiger stripe tuxs that fred and others had. and it does look like rene' talking to tom. hey tom, what ever happened to the footage that was shot that day? was it in some video or what? and dig that weird air system back back set-up!
Shane-O

I just looked at www.whitepages.com and found a couple of Fred and Alred Schultzs in the bay area. I am sure that none of them are likely to be the same guy but this sounds like a very interesting man and it would be nice to see him found.

i was on webdogradio and they had a clip of fred playing old school with a mag ( and a very long barrel).

check it out

from the judge in the WDP v Sp case.... " i find it significant that aside from a somewhat limited notebook produced by gaston, the four named inventors offer NO documentation of there work or there contributions to the conception or reduction to practice of the claimed invention"

Thing is that I heard he had some kind of an injjury, something about a neck joint or something? Actually, Freddy was a great guy for paintball. Sure, he was sponsored by everyone and their uncle joe, but he also had the passion. He also took time to talk to EVERYONE.

And I can reassure you that he led from the front. A lot. At one big game, I got a good crawl down and got behind a flag station only to find Fred and a flag runner attacking it from the front. We got it, it was cool. He led from the front, trust me.

Many meomries of Fred, miss that guy. Actually, we could use a few more of 'em in the sport.

"Oh, you're wearing a tail and ears, you're a freak."
"No social change has ever come about without freaks. Einstein was a freak. Ben Franklin was a freak. Martin Luther King was a freak. ...be proud to be included in those ranks."

This is so weird, I was at a party on Saturday night for hte Paintball Expo, and I was talking to Chris Iaquintas, a freelance writer for FaceFull and Splat Magazine about doing a where are they now with Fred Schultz..

Fred was awsome in his day. I had a ton of APG mags from that era, maybe i'll have to didg them up and take a look again. Fred came up here to Canada for an event called beach blitz, un fortuanely i couldnt make it that day, but I was there the next day and Youngblood was there. I would have rather met Fred than Dave.

Im off to dig up the old APG Mags... if I find any good pics.. I'll scan them in and post them.

Were those the suits designed by Tim Schloss (Spelling?) from "The Pro Shop" out of Saint Louis? I remember seeing a picture of Tim in one of those tuxs shortly after that event.

This would have been around 92-93 I think ... I remember the radio show. I also remember playing against Pursuit at "The Paintball Zone" and getting walked over completely. Though I have to admit that Fred was cool about it. He walked over to us after the game and was saying that we had put up some stiff competion during that game. Mind you this was speedball and it was us with pumps (I think one semi maybe) and them with all semis LOL ... can we say kill zone ...

Fred used to show up at Paintball Sams's big games. I remember playing with him a few times. Great guy. It was very nice to have a leader that the random 200 people would listen to. I miss his involvement.